And this my friend is home

Left to Right: Linette, Katie, Laura, Veryan, and Simon B

I remember the tone the sunlight made

And each time it comes to visit I remember

And taste and scent, and sense released from sense

The sense of everything as golden and remembered

Even as it slips into the course of these events

And this my friend is home

Right here and in this tone of sun and fire and form
Where listening is a birth each time...

The music selection of Late Night Tales by Jon Hopkins features an alluring poem by Rick Holland, and I just love this excerpt of it.

As a worker at the charity Dads House, I do remember the sense of everything as golden. Perhaps it’s because when we started our family law Clinic a year ago, when the May sunshine flooded through our door and windows and illuminated everything.

There’s a glow too from the holistic nature of the activity all around us.

I love positioning my chair in a part of the room where I can see the clients of the food bank choosing their supplies, can see my boss answering his many phone calls in that cheery manner (even now I only understand one word in two of his Scottish brogue), and can hear the office banter.

This surely provides a welcoming and positive vibe for our family law clinic clients, since they meet it face to face when they visit us.

Often our new clients seem bereft, their shoulders are hunched, and their spirits are low.

Surely one of our objectives is to deliver family law advice of a quality which will ensure that during that hour that they have with us, their shoulders become a bit less hunched, a smile creases on their faces, and surely to goodness we can have a laugh together on parting.

Most of our work relates to children, and the heartache that separating parents can feel when they don’t see their children. Future articles will talk more about the law and how it can help clients better in these situations. The delay and the bluntness of the system do not always assist.

I think that if we family law advisers concentrate on the children, everything else will follow. Our strategy as family law advisors must be to enable children to have wholesome relationships with their parents, even when the parents are separated.

The role of our student advisors round the table is crucial here. They happen to be much closer in age to our clients’ children than we are. They are of the same generation X, Y or Z or whatever it is now that we are meant to be talking about. They therefore provide an empathy that naturally provides a relationship of trust, which is the bedrock of all successful bonds between clients and their legal advisers.

Listening to our new clients’ stories is a birth each time.

All washed down with a cup of tea. My boss makes me a cup of tea every time I see a new client. It’s always welcome.

And this is my friend is home.

Left to Right: Veryan, Billy, Anna, and Lucy

Simon Bruce - Supervising Solicitor, Lake District, 26 May 2021